Perceived Momentum Influences Responsibility Judgments

Jeffrey Parker, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

Iman Paul, Georgia Institute of Technology

Nicholas Reinholtz, University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract

This work examines the extent to which people hold independent
sequential events (e.g., players making correct/incorrect guesses) responsible
for overall outcomes (e.g., the team winning/losing the game). Two types of
events are found to garner the majority of responsibility for overall outcomes:
(1) final events and (2) events that are perceived to disrupt momentum (e.g., an
incorrect guess after a sequence of correct guesses). While previous research has
shown that final events tend to be perceived as more responsible for overall
outcomes, the current experiments are the first to document the role of perceived
momentum on responsibility judgments. Specifically, we demonstrate that the
effect is mediated by perceived momentum changes after the time of the event and
moderated when exogenous factors (e.g., a delay between events) disrupt perceived
momentum. We discuss how these findings relate to pivotality, the counterfactual
simulation model, and the role of unexpectedness in responsibility judgments.